Dr. Johnson’s research interests include behavior and welfare, specifically, pig health, pain and euthanization, caretaker-pig interactions, enrichment, on-farm assessments and audits and sow productive lifetime.
Members of the Disease and Muscle Dysfunction Lab are interested in mechanisms of muscle injury. We study this within the context of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and dysfunction caused by heat stress with two major goals: 1) improve our mechanistic understanding of these pathologies so that, 2) we can develop and deploy effective therapies and countermeasures.
The Keating research group investigates the impacts of environmental stressors including toxicant exposure and heat stress on ovarian function using rodent and large animal models. Our long term goal is to improve fertility outcomes in production animals and humans.
Dr. Youngs’ research focuses on the use of reproductive biotechnologies (artificial insemination, embryo transfer) for genetic improvement of livestock. He has a special interest in embryo and sperm cryopreservation.